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• Why does loading a html page opens automaically the printer dialog?

  - by Alex

  I have the problem that loading a certain webpage in firefox automatically opens the printer dialog. How is that? Additional information: This only happens on firefox 24.0 on Windows 7. It neither happens on Windows Explorer in Windows 7 nor on Firefox 24 on a Linux system. This also happens when using the firefox safemode, with all add-ons disabled. I cannot post the webpage, since it is not public and restricted. Multiple javascript files are used, but none contains the expression print(). The page content does not contain the phrase 'printer'. It has nothing to do with printing something. This happens sometimes, but not always. I cannot say for sure the URL and/or the content is always identical. I can answer any other questions, like 'Does the page contain this and that...', 'does the URL contain this and that...' Basic question: What could be the reason for the annoying printer pop up?

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• Website is not accessible from server which is using proxy

  - by Bhoot

  I hosted a website in a win 2008 R2 server which runs in private domain. I set up bindings for port 80 and 443 for http & https respectively. Created inbound rule for port 80 and 443 also in windows firewall. After doing all this, i am still not able to access my website from remote machine. IE : Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage. Chrome : Oops! Google Chrome could not find xxxxxx Tried accessing website by ip address but no luck. I tried to ping that server but it says TTL expired in Transit. Now i found some more information over internet to check if the server is using any kind of proxy in between. I found my IP address at www.getip.com, but ipconfig/all gives me a different IP address. Is it really a problem if we use proxy ? I am not sure if i have concluded it correctly. But is there any way out to resolve this issue? Update ::: I figured it out. I have to call that website with external IP address. due to the proxy settings i was not able to call that website by the server's IP or name of that machine.

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• Windows 7 delayed file delete

  - by GregoryM

  I'm stuck with a pretty rare problem that happens on Windows 7 OS only. Every time I'm deleting the file with *.exe extension through explorer, the file doesn't get deleted immediately. I'm forced to wait for around one-two minutes before the system will delete the file. The main problem is that I cannot develop in such situation, because every time I build my solution, the old executable gets 'deleted', but is still there. So the new one cannot be created by Visual Studio. This problem breaks the Steam update progress and a few other installers functionality too. Fresh installed Win7 doesn't have this kind of trouble, so I guess this must be some bad registry entries or some services. Browsing the internet for solutions I found only this: http://www.sevenforums.com/software/72091-several-minute-delay-when-deleting-any-exe-file.html. But the solution the author found is not working (change the userName :)). Is there any ideas how to find what causes this to happen? BTW: when I place the file into Trash bin, no delay occurs. When I delete file with Total Commander - no delay too. Tech details: Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. UPD: maybe some shadow copying or system restore services (though I have the system restore turned off) block the files? Can't even guess...

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• Shell replacement for kiosk environment with desktop icons

  - by tuesprem

  I have to deploy around 80 touch-screen terminals for my company. We're going to run several Windows applications on those terminals and they'll be operated by touch input only. I basically want those machines to run in a kiosk mode, so employees won't be able to launch any programs than the ones they're supposed to (also, this will hide the task bar/start menu, which will give it a much nicer, corporate look). There's usually one app that should automatically launch on startup and other apps that can be launched from the desktop. I've tried to accomplish this (under Windows 7 Pro) with a custom shell replacement. This removes the task bar/start menu like I described earlier. I used an AutoHotKey script for this, because it's easy to, for instance, define hotkeys so admins will still be able to launch stuff like Windows Explorer (okay, I know I could just launch it from the task manager [Ctrl+Shift+Esc] but I'm considering locking that as well). So far so good. Some problems though: No desktop icons. Needed to launch apps from the desktop. No wallpaper. Required for CI. Is there any way around this? I wouldn't mind using another shell replacement, as long as it's reasonably lightweight. I'd love to get the wallpaper and desktop icons to show with something like AutoHotKey though. Thanks!

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• How to access files on a USB-connected NTFS disk removed from a Win7 notebook?

  - by yosh m

  My daughter seems to have fried her motherboard in her Lenovo Notebook. The disk seems to be fine. I removed the disk and used a universal disk-to-USB kit to attach it to another computer. The disk is recognized fine and I can peruse it in Windows Explorer. The problem is that the files she would like to recover from it are located in places that Windows refuses to let me access. When I try, for example, to enter the directory "Documents and Settings" it gives me an "Access is denied" error. Same thing when I try to go into the various User directories and other locations. I thought to try creating a Ghost image & retrieve the files from that, but Ghost seems to croak when I try to run it - apparently it doesn't like accessing the disk via a USB connection (even though I've told it to install the drivers for USB). Any other ideas about how to get to the files I need, either through Windows or perhaps some other OS that I could boot from a CD that can read an NTFS disk? Thanks, Yosh

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• How can I find which logon script is being run?

  - by user2517266

  I'm having an issue with network drives. Suddenly some computers and users aren't getting their mapped network drives from the logon script. I am NOT a domain admin, I don't have permission to login to the domain controller. And I know very little about Active Directory. The issue seems random, some users this day, different users tomorrow. Some computers run fine and some won't map no matter who logs in. They are mixed OS's XP (SP3), Vista, and 7. I was looking at the domain in windows explorer and I have found the batch file(s) that maps the drives in several locations, how do I know which one is actually being ran? The .bat file is located in \DOMAIN\NETLOGON\script.bat and \DOMAIN\SYSVOL\DOMAIN\scripts\script.bat and \DOMAIN\SYSVOL\DOMAIN\policies\GUID(Right? It's a crazy string)\User\Scripts\Logon\script.bat So, how can I figure out which one is actually being ran per computer or user? Cause they are all slightly different from each other and one of them doesn't map properly. Do all the files in NETLOGON get ran? Cause there are 15+ files in there. Or is it specified in Group Policy which one(s) get ran? EDIT: I am able to access a program called Active Directory Users and Computers, but the properties tab for any user is blank for the logon script.

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• Escaping %’s in file-/folder-names at the command-line

  - by Synetech

  Does anybody of a way to access files and directories that have a % in their name (which is valid) from the command-line? Specifically, if there are two %’s and the text between them happens to correspond to an environment variable. For example, if there is a file called C:\blah\%temp%.txt or a folder called C:\Program Files\%temp%\, none of the following will work because the variable gets expanded: > dir "c:\blah\%temp%.txt" > dir "c:\blah\^%temp^%.txt" > dir "c:\blah\%%temp%%.txt" > dir "c:\blah\\%temp\%.txt" > dir "c:\program files\%temp%" > dir "c:\program files\^%temp^%" > dir "c:\program files\%%temp%%" > dir "c:\program files\\%temp\%" Using wildcards will work, but does not uniquely select the file/folder and may include others: > dir "c:\blah\?temp?.txt"        (also shows ztempz.temp, 1tempa.txt, etc.) > dir "c:\program files\?temp?"   (likewise) (This is frustrating because every now and then—usually when Explorer is restarted for whatever reason—the environment variables stop expanding and some places where they are used end up creating files or directories with the environment variable in it. For example, because I configured Chromium to store its cache in a subdirectory of %temp%, if the variable expands, it is fine, but when it doesn’t, Chromium creates a directory called %temp% under its own directory and stores the cache—which can get large—there. I want to add a line to my temp-/junk-file cleaning script to automatically delete that folder if it exists, but I cannot figure out how to access it from the command-line without resorting to wildcards.)

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• Configure Web app for external access (IIS7), allowing only certain users via AD group. All users need internal access

  - by White Island

  We have a Web app running in IIS7 (Server 2008 R2). I now need to allow external access with an SSL certificate, so certain users (e.g. the owner of the company) can use it remotely without VPN. They want to roll out the external access only to those specific users at first (thinking: a Windows credential prompt), BUT everyone will still need access internally (HTTP), without the prompt. I have the SSL cert installed on the server and public DNS configured. I've been trying to figure out how to work the authentication/authorization. I was thinking I need to disable Anonymous authn and set Windows authn, then I keep coming back to 'URL Authorization' in my research for the group setting; however, when I tried URL authz, (removed allow all, added allow rule for the special group), it broke the site internally (403.2 Forbidden, I believe it was). I thought maybe setting up a second site in IIS pointing to the same program would work, but the exact same thing happened (and again with a new app pool, just for kicks). So I guess my question is, how would you do this: allow external access, limited to users in a specific AD group, while still allowing internal access without a credentials prompt? How do I separate the external HTTPS and internal HTTP authorization requirements? Will I need to just copy the entire contents of the app in Windows Explorer to a new folder and create my external site from that? Is Windows authentication the correct option for this? I did come across this, which refers to creating a custom module. While it sounds like a solution, it's not one I'm familiar with, and I just wondered if there is a simpler way to get it to work: http://forums.iis.net/p/1182792/2000775.aspx Thanks!

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• Can't install flash on Firefox or Chrome (but works fine on IE...)

  - by WP

  I'm using a work computer (Lenovo) that I recently got from my IT department to replace an old machine. When I installed Firefox and Chrome, I needed to install Adobe Flash. However, the installation has failed on several occasions. I've taken all the usual steps: closing all programs and windows, installing updates and restarting machine, etc, but still the installation does not work. The download manager and status bars say that installation is complete, but I still can't view flash sites on FF or Chrome. Flash is working fine on IE though. Last thing: when I reboot the first dialog box that comes up is from Adobe Download Manager, and it says "Please shut down Internet Explorer before uninstall can complete". I'm confused since a) I've just rebooted so have yet to start IE and b) why UNinstall? My company does not support non-IE browsers so I'm not getting much help from our IT department. If necessary I can post screenshots of error messages and stuff if it comes to that, but hopefully someone will be able to diagnose the problem before that's necessary as I'm not the most tech savvy (despite being a huge fan of reddit...)

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• Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

  - by ScottGu

  Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure.  Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account.  This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it).  The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service.  You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it.  This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog.  You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects.  We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them).  You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data.  We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs.  You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud.  You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog.  For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery.  You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog.  For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level.  So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites.  This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier).  Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications.  Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy.  Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer.  Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure.  The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio.  For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template.  When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property.  When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser.  This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio.  You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance.  To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end.  Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting.  You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!).  Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center.  Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions.  They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services.  Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support.  It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services.  This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services.  I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it.  Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks).  Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings.  This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass).  Enabling this is now really easy.  To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal.  This will create a dialog like below.  I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository.  We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account.  Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to.  Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories.  This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services.  Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure.  You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services.  We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy.  Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI.  If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase.  For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever:  Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site.  We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app.  We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager.  You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent.  Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go.  We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it.  We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it.  The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this.  Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code.  The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages.  You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more).  The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these.  This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications.  Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic.  The  multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure.  This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total.  To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview.  Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit.  For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS.  Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• "Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation" Running Tests - VS2008 SP1

  - by omatrot

  I'm using Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite and I'm unable to run tests and display the Test/Windows/Test Result Window. The result is a dialog box with the following content : "Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation". Team Explorer has been installed after Visual Studio 2008 SP1. So I have re-apllied the service pack. Searching the web I found that this error is pretty common but unfortunately, the proposed solutions does not work for me. The problem was never analysed so I decided to give it a try : I reproduced the problem on a computer, attached the process with windbg and start with the basic investigations. Following are the first results : 0:000>!dumpstack OS Thread Id: 0xdb0 (0) Current frame: USER32!NtUserWaitMessage+0x15 ChildEBP RetAddr Caller,Callee 003fec94 75a32674 USER32!DialogBox2+0x222, calling USER32!NtUserWaitMessage 003fecd0 75a3288a USER32!InternalDialogBox+0xe5, calling USER32!DialogBox2 003fecfc 75a6f8d0 USER32!SoftModalMessageBox+0x757, calling USER32!InternalDialogBox 003fed3c 6eb61996 mscorwks!Thread::ReverseLeaveRuntime+0x95, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3 003fedb0 75a6fbac USER32!MessageBoxWorker+0x269, calling USER32!SoftModalMessageBox 003fede0 6ea559c3 mscorwks!SetupThreadNoThrow+0x19a, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003fee24 6eb61d8a mscorwks!HasIllegalReentrancy+0xac, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3 003fee30 6ea89796 mscorwks!SimpleComCallWrapper::Release+0x2e, calling mscorwks!CompareExchangeMP 003fee38 6ea0da05 mscorwks!CLRException::HandlerState::CleanupTry+0x16, calling mscorwks!GetCurrentSEHRecord 003fee44 6ea0c9c0 mscorwks!Thread::EnablePreemptiveGC+0xf, calling mscorwks!Thread::CatchAtSafePoint 003fee4c 6ea8a241 mscorwks!Unknown_Release_Internal+0x24d, calling mscorwks!GCHolder<1,0,0>::Pop 003fee50 6ea0c86c mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS+0xa, calling mscorwks!__security_check_cookie 003fee54 6ea8a24c mscorwks!Unknown_Release_Internal+0x258, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003fee7c 75a16941 USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x13d, calling ntdll!RtlDeactivateActivationContextUnsafeFast 003feed8 7082119e msenv!ATL::CComCritSecLock<ATL::CComCriticalSection>::Lock+0xd, calling ntdll!RtlEnterCriticalSection 003fef08 75a6fe5b USER32!MessageBoxIndirectW+0x2e, calling USER32!MessageBoxWorker 003fef7c 70a1e367 msenv!MessageBoxPVoidW+0xda 003fefd4 70a1db60 msenv!VBDialogCover2+0x11b 003ff01c 70a1e4c0 msenv!VBMessageBox2W+0xf0, calling msenv!VBDialogCover2 003ff044 7087246b msenv!main_GetAppNameW+0xa, calling msenv!GetAppNameInternal 003ff04c 70a1e4f2 msenv!VBMessageBox3W+0x1c, calling msenv!VBMessageBox2W 003ff064 70a1d6d7 msenv!_IdMsgShow+0x362, calling msenv!VBMessageBox3W 003ff0cc 70951841 msenv!TaskDialogCallback+0x7e0, calling msenv!_IdMsgShow 003ff118 6eb20da4 mscorwks!Unknown_QueryInterface+0x230, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003ff14c 6eb20c43 mscorwks!Unknown_QueryInterface_Internal+0x3d8, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003ff168 02006ec4 02006ec4, calling 0247a1e8 003ff16c 6ea0c86c mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS+0xa, calling mscorwks!__security_check_cookie 003ff198 6eb20562 mscorwks!COMToCLRWorker+0xb34, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003ff19c 0247a235 0247a235, calling mscorwks!COMToCLRWorker 003ff1c4 7083249f msenv!CVSCommandTarget::ExecCmd+0x937 003ff1e4 7086d5c8 msenv!VsReportErrorInfo+0x11, calling msenv!TaskDialogCallback+0xd8 003ff1f8 7093e65b msenv!CVSCommandTarget::ExecCmd+0x945, calling msenv!VsReportErrorInfo 003ff25c 7081f53a msenv!ATL::CComPtr<IVsLanguageInfo>::~CComPtr<IVsLanguageInfo>+0x24, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff260 70b18d72 msenv!LogCommand+0x4c, calling msenv!ATL::CComPtr<IVsCodePageSelection>::~CComPtr<IVsCodePageSelection> 003ff264 70b18d77 msenv!LogCommand+0x51, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff280 70a4fd0e msenv!CMsoButtonUser::FClick+0x1d1, calling msenv!CVSCommandTarget::ExecCmd 003ff2f4 70823a87 msenv!CTLSITE::QueryInterface+0x16 003ff31c 70cb7d4d msenv!TBCB::FNotifyFocus+0x204 003ff35c 70ce5fda msenv!TB::NotifyControl+0x101 003ff3bc 709910f6 msenv!TB::FRequestFocus+0x4ed, calling msenv!TB::NotifyControl 003ff414 708254ba msenv!CMsoButtonUser::FEnabled+0x3d, calling msenv!GetQueryStatusFlags 003ff428 7086222a msenv!TBC::FAutoEnabled+0x24 003ff43c 7098e1eb msenv!TB::LProcessInputMsg+0xdb4 003ff458 6bec1c49 (MethodDesc 0x6bcd7f54 +0x89 System.Windows.Forms.Form.DefWndProc(System.Windows.Forms.Message ByRef)), calling 6be3b738 003ff50c 70823ab0 msenv!FPtbFromSite+0x16 003ff520 70991c43 msenv!TB::PtbParent+0x25, calling msenv!FPtbFromSite 003ff52c 708dda49 msenv!TBWndProc+0x2da 003ff588 0203d770 0203d770, calling 0247a1e8 003ff598 70822a70 msenv!CPaneFrame::Release+0x118, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff5b0 75a16238 USER32!InternalCallWinProc+0x23 003ff5dc 75a168ea USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x109, calling USER32!InternalCallWinProc 003ff620 75a16899 USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x6a, calling ntdll!RtlActivateActivationContextUnsafeFast 003ff654 75a17d31 USER32!DispatchMessageWorker+0x3bc, calling USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow 003ff688 70847f2b msenv!CMsoComponent::FPreTranslateMessage+0x72, calling msenv!MainFTranslateMessage 003ff6b4 75a17dfa USER32!DispatchMessageW+0xf, calling USER32!DispatchMessageWorker 003ff6c4 70831553 msenv!EnvironmentMsgLoop+0x1ea, calling USER32!DispatchMessageW 003ff6f8 708eb9bd msenv!CMsoCMHandler::FPushMessageLoop+0x86, calling msenv!EnvironmentMsgLoop 003ff724 708eb94d msenv!SCM::FPushMessageLoop+0xb7 003ff74c 708eb8e9 msenv!SCM_MsoCompMgr::FPushMessageLoop+0x28, calling msenv!SCM::FPushMessageLoop 003ff768 708eb8b8 msenv!CMsoComponent::PushMsgLoop+0x28 003ff788 708ebe4e msenv!VStudioMainLogged+0x482, calling msenv!CMsoComponent::PushMsgLoop 003ff7ac 70882afe msenv!CVsActivityLogSingleton::Instance+0xdf, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff7d8 70882afe msenv!CVsActivityLogSingleton::Instance+0xdf, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff7dc 707e4e31 msenv!VActivityLogStartupEntries+0x42 003ff7f4 7081f63b msenv!ATL::CComPtr<IClassFactory>::~CComPtr<IClassFactory>+0x24, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff7f8 708b250f msenv!ATL::CComQIPtr<IUnknown,&IID_IUnknown>::~CComQIPtr<IUnknown,&IID_IUnknown>+0x1d, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff820 708e7561 msenv!VStudioMain+0xc1, calling msenv!VStudioMainLogged 003ff84c 2f32aabc devenv!util_CallVsMain+0xff 003ff878 2f3278f2 devenv!CDevEnvAppId::Run+0x11fd, calling devenv!util_CallVsMain 003ff97c 77533b23 ntdll!RtlpAllocateHeap+0xe73, calling ntdll!_SEH_epilog4 003ff9f0 77536cd7 ntdll!RtlpLowFragHeapAllocFromContext+0x882, calling ntdll!RtlpSubSegmentInitialize 003ffa10 7753609f ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError+0x3b, calling ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosErrorNoTeb 003ffa14 775360a4 ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError+0x40, calling ntdll!_SEH_epilog4 003ffa40 775360a4 ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError+0x40, calling ntdll!_SEH_epilog4 003ffa44 75bd2736 kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey+0x159, calling ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError 003ffa48 75bd2762 kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey+0x22a, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffac4 75bd2762 kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey+0x22a, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffac8 75bd28c9 kernel32!RegOpenKeyExInternalW+0x130, calling kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey 003ffad8 75bd28de kernel32!RegOpenKeyExInternalW+0x211 003ffae0 75bd28e5 kernel32!RegOpenKeyExInternalW+0x21d, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffb04 6f282e2b MSVCR90!_unlock+0x15, calling ntdll!RtlLeaveCriticalSection 003ffb14 75bd2642 kernel32!BaseRegCloseKeyInternal+0x41, calling ntdll!NtClose 003ffb28 75bd25d0 kernel32!RegCloseKey+0xd4, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffb5c 75bd25d0 kernel32!RegCloseKey+0xd4, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffb60 2f321ea4 devenv!DwInitSyncObjects+0x340 003ffb90 2f327bf4 devenv!WinMain+0x74, calling devenv!CDevEnvAppId::Run 003ffbac 2f327c68 devenv!License::GetPID+0x258, calling devenv!WinMain 003ffc3c 75bd3677 kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk+0xe 003ffc48 77539d72 ntdll!__RtlUserThreadStart+0x70 003ffc88 77539d45 ntdll!_RtlUserThreadStart+0x1b, calling ntdll!__RtlUserThreadStart 0:000> !pe -nested Exception object: 050aae9c Exception type: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException Message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. InnerException: System.NullReferenceException, use !PrintException 050aac64 to see more StackTrace (generated): SP IP Function 003FEC2C 6D2700F7 mscorlib_ni!System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean, Boolean)+0x57 003FEC5C 6D270067 mscorlib_ni!System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(Boolean, Boolean, Boolean)+0xe7 003FEC94 6D270264 mscorlib_ni!System.Activator.CreateInstance(System.Type, Boolean)+0x44 003FECA4 6AD02DAF Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.CreateToolWindow(System.Type, Int32, Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.ProvideToolWindowAttribute)+0x67 003FED30 6AD0311B Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.CreateToolWindow(System.Type, Int32)+0xb7 003FED58 6AD02D12 Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.FindToolWindow(System.Type, Int32, Boolean, Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.ProvideToolWindowAttribute)+0x7a 003FED88 6AD02D39 Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.FindToolWindow(System.Type, Int32, Boolean)+0x11 003FED94 02585E30 Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.InitToolWindowVariable[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]](System.__Canon ByRef, System.String, Boolean)+0x58 003FEDD0 02585DBE Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.InitToolWindowVariable[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]](System.__Canon ByRef, System.String)+0x36 003FEDE4 02585D32 Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.ShowToolWindow[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]](System.__Canon ByRef, System.String, Boolean)+0x3a 003FEE00 02585AB4 Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.OpenTestResultsToolWindow()+0x2c 003FEE10 02585A6E Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.OnMenuViewTestResults(System.Object, System.EventArgs)+0x6 003FEE18 6CD4F993 System_ni!System.ComponentModel.Design.MenuCommand.Invoke()+0x43 003FEE40 6CD4F9D4 System_ni!System.ComponentModel.Design.MenuCommand.Invoke(System.Object)+0x8 003FEE48 6AD000FA Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.OleMenuCommandService.Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IOleCommandTarget.Exec(System.Guid ByRef, UInt32, UInt32, IntPtr, IntPtr)+0x11a 003FEEA0 6AD03FB8 Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IOleCommandTarget.Exec(System.Guid ByRef, UInt32, UInt32, IntPtr, IntPtr)+0x44 StackTraceString: <none> HResult: 80131604 0:000> !PrintException 050aac64 Exception object: 050aac64 Exception type: System.NullReferenceException Message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. InnerException: <none> StackTrace (generated): SP IP Function 003FE660 078E60BE Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Integration!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TcmResultsPublishManager..ctor(Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.ResultsPublishManager)+0xc6 003FE674 078E5C91 Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Integration!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.ResultsPublishManager..ctor(Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TeamFoundationHostHelper)+0x59 003FE684 078E2FA0 Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Integration!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.VsetServerHelper..ctor(System.IServiceProvider)+0x50 003FE6A4 078E2E90 Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Common!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.InitializeThrow(System.IServiceProvider)+0x20 003FE6B8 078E2E2A Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Common!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.InitializeHelper(System.IServiceProvider)+0x22 003FE6E0 078E2DEC Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Common!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.CreateVsetHelper(System.IServiceProvider)+0x1c 003FE6F0 078E2DAC Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.get_VsetHelper()+0x14 003FE6F8 02586BBE Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.ResultsToolWindow..ctor()+0x9f6 003FE798 02585F8A Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.ResultToolWindowHost..ctor()+0x1a StackTraceString: <none> HResult: 80004003 In order to be able to continue the analysis, we need to get the parameters to see what is going on. I also tried to run devenv.exe with the /log switch. No error in the log after reproducing the problem. Finally, If Team Explorer is removed from the system, the problem goes away. Any help appreciated. TIA. Olivier.

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• April 14th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and Visual Studio

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing blog series: ASP.NET Easily overlooked features in VS 11 Express for Web: Good post by Scott Hanselman that highlights a bunch of easily overlooked improvements that are coming to VS 11 (and specifically the free express editions) for web development: unit testing, browser chooser/launcher, IIS Express, CSS Color Picker, Image Preview in Solution Explorer and more. Get Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms: Good 5-part tutorial that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET Web Forms and highlights some of the nice improvements coming with ASP.NET 4.5. What is New in Razor V2 and What Else is New in Razor V2: Great posts by Andrew Nurse, a dev on the ASP.NET team, about some of the new improvements coming with ASP.NET Razor v2. ASP.NET MVC 4 AllowAnonymous Attribute: Nice post from David Hayden that talks about the new [AllowAnonymous] filter introduced with ASP.NET MVC 4. Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API: Great tutorial by Stephen Walher that covers how to use the new ASP.NET Web API support built-into ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Comprehensive List of ASP.NET Web API Tutorials and Articles: Tugberk Ugurlu links to a huge collection of articles, tutorials, and samples about the new ASP.NET Web API capability. Async Mashups using ASP.NET Web API: Nice post by Henrik on how you can use the new async language support coming with .NET 4.5 to easily and efficiently make asynchronous network requests that do not block threads within ASP.NET. ASP.NET and Front-End Web Development Visual Studio 11 and Front End Web Development - JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3: Nice post by Scott Hanselman that highlights some of the great improvements coming with VS 11 (including the free express edition) for front-end web development. HTML5 Drag/Drop and Async Multi-file Upload with ASP.NET Web API: Great post by Filip W. that demonstrates how to implement an async file drag/drop uploader using HTML5 and ASP.NET Web API. Device Emulator Guide for Mobile Development with ASP.NET: Good post from Rachel Appel that covers how to use various device emulators with ASP.NET and VS to develop cross platform mobile sites. Fixing these jQuery: A Guide to Debugging: Great presentation by Adam Sontag on debugging with JavaScript and jQuery.  Some really good tips, tricks and gotchas that can save a lot of time. ASP.NET and Open Source Getting Started with ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Fantastic post by Henrik (an architect on the ASP.NET team) that provides step by step instructions on how to work with the ASP.NET source code we recently open sourced. Contributing to ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Follow-on to the post above (also by Henrik) that walks-through how you can submit a code contribution to the ASP.NET MVC, Web API and Razor projects. Overview of the WebApiContrib project: Nice post by Pedro Reys on the new open source WebApiContrib project that has been started to deliver cool extensions and libraries for use with ASP.NET Web API. Entity Framework Entity Framework 5 Performance Improvements and Performance Considerations for EF5:  Good articles that describes some of the big performance wins coming with EF5 (which will ship with both .NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4). Automatic compilation of LINQ queries will yield some significant performance wins (up to 600% faster). ASP.NET MVC 4 and EF Database Migrations: Good post by David Hayden that covers the new database migrations support within EF 4.3 which allows you to easily update your database schema during development - without losing any of the data within it. Visual Studio What's New in Visual Studio 11 Unit Testing: Nice post by Peter Provost (from the VS team) that talks about some of the great improvements coming to VS11 for unit testing - including built-in VS tooling support for a broad set of unit test frameworks (including NUnit, XUnit, Jasmine, QUnit and more) Hope this helps, Scott

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• Creating a Build Definition using the TFS 2010 API

  - by Jakob Ehn

  In this post I will show how to create a new build definition in TFS 2010 using the TFS API. When creating a build definition manually, using Team Explorer, the necessary steps are lined out in the New Build Definition Wizard:     So, lets see how the code looks like, using the same order. To start off, we need to connect to TFS and get a reference to the IBuildServer object: TfsTeamProjectCollection server = newTfsTeamProjectCollection(newUri("http://<tfs>:<port>/tfs")); server.EnsureAuthenticated(); IBuildServer buildServer = (IBuildServer) server.GetService(typeof (IBuildServer)); General First we create a IBuildDefinition object for the team project and set a name and description for it: var buildDefinition = buildServer.CreateBuildDefinition(teamProject); buildDefinition.Name = "TestBuild"; buildDefinition.Description = "description here..."; Trigger Next up, we set the trigger type. For this one, we set it to individual which corresponds to the Continuous Integration - Build each check-in trigger option buildDefinition.ContinuousIntegrationType = ContinuousIntegrationType.Individual; Workspace For the workspace mappings, we create two mappings here, where one is a cloak. Note the user of $(SourceDir) variable, which is expanded by Team Build into the sources directory when running the build. buildDefinition.Workspace.AddMapping("$/Path/project.sln", "$(SourceDir)", WorkspaceMappingType.Map); buildDefinition.Workspace.AddMapping("$/OtherPath/", "", WorkspaceMappingType.Cloak); Build Defaults In the build defaults, we set the build controller and the drop location. To get a build controller, we can (for example) use the GetBuildController method to get an existing build controller by name: buildDefinition.BuildController = buildServer.GetBuildController(buildController); buildDefinition.DefaultDropLocation = @\\SERVER\Drop\TestBuild; Process So far, this wasy easy. Now we get to the tricky part. TFS 2010 Build is based on Windows Workflow 4.0. The build process is defined in a separate .XAML file called a Build Process Template. By default, every new team team project containtwo build process templates called DefaultTemplate and UpgradeTemplate. In this sample, we want to create a build definition using the default template. We use te QueryProcessTemplates method to get a reference to the default for the current team project   //Get default template var defaultTemplate = buildServer.QueryProcessTemplates(teamProject).Where(p => p.TemplateType == ProcessTemplateType.Default).First(); buildDefinition.Process = defaultTemplate;   There are several build process templates that can be set for the default build process template. Only one of these are required, the ProjectsToBuild parameters which contains the solution(s) and configuration(s) that should be built. To set this info, we use the ProcessParameters property of thhe IBuildDefinition interface. The format of this property is actually just a serialized dictionary (IDictionary<string, object>) that maps a key (parameter name) to a value which can be any kind of object. This is rather messy, but fortunately, there is a helper class called WorkflowHelpers inthe Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Workflow namespace, that simplifies working with this persistence format a bit. The following code shows how to set the BuildSettings information for a build definition: //Set process parameters varprocess = WorkflowHelpers.DeserializeProcessParameters(buildDefinition.ProcessParameters); //Set BuildSettings properties BuildSettings settings = newBuildSettings(); settings.ProjectsToBuild = newStringList("$/pathToProject/project.sln"); settings.PlatformConfigurations = newPlatformConfigurationList(); settings.PlatformConfigurations.Add(newPlatformConfiguration("Any CPU", "Debug")); process.Add("BuildSettings", settings); buildDefinition.ProcessParameters = WorkflowHelpers.SerializeProcessParameters(process); The other build process parameters of a build definition can be set using the same approach   Retention  Policy This one is easy, we just clear the default settings and set our own: buildDefinition.RetentionPolicyList.Clear(); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Succeeded, 10, DeleteOptions.All); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Failed, 10, DeleteOptions.All); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Stopped, 1, DeleteOptions.All); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.PartiallySucceeded, 10, DeleteOptions.All); Save It! And we’re done, lets save the build definition: buildDefinition.Save(); That’s it!

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• Removing the XML Formatter from ASP.NET Web API Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  ASP.NET Web API's default output format is supposed to be JSON, but when I access my Web APIs using the browser address bar I'm always seeing an XML result instead. When working on AJAX application I like to test many of my AJAX APIs with the browser while working on them. While I can't debug all requests this way, GET requests are easy to test in the browser especially if you have JSON viewing options set up in your various browsers. If I preview a Web API request in most browsers I get an XML response like this: Why is that? Web API checks the HTTP Accept headers of a request to determine what type of output it should return by looking for content typed that it has formatters registered for. This automatic negotiation is one of the great features of Web API because it makes it easy and transparent to request different kinds of output from the server. In the case of browsers it turns out that most send Accept headers that look like this (Chrome in this case): Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Web API inspects the entire list of headers from left to right (plus the quality/priority flag q=) and tries to find a media type that matches its list of supported media types in the list of formatters registered. In this case it matches application/xml to the Xml formatter and so that's what gets returned and displayed. To verify that Web API indeed defaults to JSON output by default you can open the request in Fiddler and pop it into the Request Composer, remove the application/xml header and see that the output returned comes back in JSON instead. An accept header like this: Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,*/*;q=0.9 or leaving the Accept header out altogether should give you a JSON response. Interestingly enough Internet Explorer 9 also displays JSON because it doesn't include an application/xml Accept header: Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */* which for once actually seems more sensible. Removing the XML Formatter We can't easily change the browser Accept headers (actually you can by delving into the config but it's a bit of a hassle), so can we change the behavior on the server? When working on AJAX applications I tend to not be interested in XML results and I always want to see JSON results at least during development. Web API uses a collection of formatters and you can go through this list and remove the ones you don't want to use - in this case the XmlMediaTypeFormatter. To do this you can work with the HttpConfiguration object and the static GlobalConfiguration object used to configure it: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // remove default Xml handler var matches = config.Formatters .Where(f = f.SupportedMediaTypes .Where(m = m.MediaType.ToString() == "application/xml" || m.MediaType.ToString() == "text/xml") .Count() 0) .ToList() ; foreach (var match in matches) config.Formatters.Remove(match); } } That LINQ code is quite a mouthful of nested collections, but it does the trick to remove the formatter based on the content type. You can also look for the specific formatter (XmlMediatTypeFormatter) by its type name which is simpler, but it's better to search for the supported types as this will work even if there are other custom formatters added. Once removed, now the browser request results in a JSON response: It's a simple solution to a small debugging task that's made my life easier. Maybe you find it useful too…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Installing the Updated XP Mode which Requires no Hardware Virtualization

  - by Mysticgeek

  Good news for those of you who have a computer without Hardware Virtualization, Microsoft had dropped the requirement so you can now run XP Mode on your machine. Here we take a look at how to install it and getting working on your PC. Microsoft has dropped the requirement that your CPU supports Hardware Virtualization for XP Mode in Windows 7. Before this requirement was dropped, we showed you how to use SecureAble to find out if your machine would run XP Mode. If it couldn’t, you might have gotten lucky with turning Hardware Virtualization on in your BIOS, or getting an update that would enable it. If not, you were out of luck or would need a different machine. Note: Although you no longer need Hardware Virtualization, you still need Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate version of Windows 7. Download Correct Version of XP Mode For this article we’re installing it on a Dell machine that doesn’t support Hardware Virtualization on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit version. The first thing you’ll want to do is go to the XP Mode website and select your edition of Windows 7 and language. Then there are three downloads you’ll need to get from the page. Windows XP Mode, Windows Virtual PC, and the Windows XP Mode Update (All Links Below). Windows genuine validation is required before you can download the XP Mode files. To make the validation process easier you might want to use IE when downloading these files and validating your version of Windows. Installing XP Mode After validation is successful the first thing to download and install is XP Mode, which is easy following the wizard and accepting the defaults. The second step is to install KB958559 which is Windows Virtual PC.   After it’s installed, a reboot is required. After you’ve come back from the restart, you’ll need to install KB977206 which is the Windows XP Mode Update.   After that’s installed, yet another restart of your system is required. After the update is configured and you return from the second reboot, you’ll find XP Mode in the Start menu under the Windows Virtual PC folder. When it launches accept the license agreement and click Next. Enter in your log in credentials… Choose if you want Automatic Updates or not… Then you’re given a message saying setup will share the hardware on your computer, then click Start Setup. While setup completes, you’re shown a display of what XP Mode does and how to use it. XP Mode launches and you can now begin using it to run older applications that are not compatible with Windows 7. Conclusion This is a welcome news for many who want the ability to use XP Mode but didn’t have the proper hardware to do it. The bad news is users of Home versions of Windows still don’t get to enjoy the XP Mode feature officially. However, we have an article that shows a great workaround – Create an XP Mode for Windows 7 Home Versions & Vista. Download XP Mode, Windows Virtual PC, and Windows XP Mode Update Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Our Look at XP Mode in Windows 7Run XP Mode on Windows 7 Machines Without Hardware VirtualizationInstall XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite PluginUnderstanding the New Hyper-V Feature in Windows Server 2008How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (sort of) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer

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• How To Disable Control Panel in Windows 7

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you have a shared computer that your family and friends can access, you might not want them to mess around in the Control Panel, and luckily with a simple tweak you can disable it. Disable Control Panel with Group Policy Note: This process uses Local Group Policy Editor which is not available in Home versions of Windows 7. Skip down below for the registry hack version that works on Home editions as well. First type gpedit.msc into the Search box in the Start menu and hit Enter. When Local Group Policy Editor opens, navigate to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates then select Control Panel in the left Column. In the right column double-click on Prohibit access to the Control Panel. In the next window, select Enable, click OK, then close out of Local Group Policy Editor. After the Control Panel is disabled, you’ll notice it’s no longer listed in the Start Menu. If the user tries to type Control Panel into the Search box in the Start menu, they will get the following message indicating it’s restricted. Disable Control Panel with a Registry Tweak You can also tweak the Registry to disable Control Panel. This will work with all versions of Windows 7, Vista, and XP. Making changes in the Registry is not recommended for beginners and you should create a Restore Point, or backup the Registry before making any changes. Type regedit into the Search box in the Start menu and hit Enter. In Registry Editor navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer. Then right-click in the right pane and create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name the value NoControlPanel. Then right-click on the new Value and click Modify…   In the Value data field change the value to “1” then click OK. Close out of Registry Editor and restart the machine to complete the process. When you get back from reboot, you’ll notice Control Panel is no longer listed in the Start menu. If a user tries to access it by typing Control Panel into the Search box in the Start menu… They will get the following message indicating it is restricted, just like if you were to disable it via Group Policy. If you want to re-enable the Control Panel, go back into the Registry and change the NoControlPanel value back to “0” then reboot the computer. This comes in handy if you have inexperienced users working on your machine and don’t want them messing with Control Panel settings. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Win 7 or VistaStill Useful in Vista: Startup Control PanelRestore Missing Items in Windows Vista Control PanelHow To Manage Action Center in Windows 7New Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-line TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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• SQL SERVER – Auto Complete and Format T-SQL Code – Devart SQL Complete

  - by pinaldave

  Some people call it laziness, some will call it efficiency, some think it is the right thing to do. At any rate, tools are meant to make a job easier, and I like to use various tools. If we consider the history of the world, if we all wanted to keep traditional practices, we would have never invented the wheel.  But as time progressed, people wanted convenience and efficiency, which then led to laziness. Wanting a more efficient way to do something is not inherently lazy.  That’s how I see any efficiency tools. A few days ago I found Devart SQL Complete.  It took less than a minute to install, and after installation it just worked without needing any tweaking.  Once I started using it I was impressed with how fast it formats SQL code – you can write down any terms or even copy and paste.  You can start typing right away, and it will complete keywords, object names, and fragmentations. It completes statement expressions.  How many times do we write insert, update, delete?  Take this example: to alter a stored procedure name, we don’t remember the code written in it, you have to write it over again, or go back to SQL Server Studio Manager to create and alter which is very difficult.  With SQL Complete , you can write “alter stored procedure,” and it will finish it for you, and you can modify as needed. I love to write code, and I love well-written code.  When I am working with clients, and I find people whose code have not been written properly, I feel a little uncomfortable.  It is difficult to deal with code that is in the wrong case, with no line breaks, no white spaces, improper indents, and no text wrapping.  The worst thing to encounter is code that goes all the way to the right side, and you have to scroll a million times because there are no breaks or indents.  SQL Complete will take care of this for you – if a developer is too lazy for proper formatting, then Devart’s SQL formatter tool will make them better, not lazier. SQL Management Studio gives information about your code when you hover your mouse over it, however SQL Complete goes further in it, going into the work table, and the current rate idea, too. It gives you more information about the parameters; and last but not least, it will just take you to the help file of code navigation.  It will open object explorer in a document viewer.  You can start going through the various properties of your code – a very important thing to do. Here are are interesting Intellisense examples: 1) We are often very lazy to expand *however, when we are using SQL Complete we can just mouse over the * and it will give us all the the column names and we can select the appropriate columns. 2) We can put the cursor after * and it will give us option to expand it to all the column names by pressing the Tab key. 3) Here is one more Intellisense feature I really liked it. I always alias my tables and I always select the alias with special logic. When I was using SQL Complete I selected just a tablename (without schema name) and…(just like below image) … and it autocompleted the schema and alias name (the way I needed it). I believe using SQL Complete we can work faster.  It supports all versions of SQL Server, and works SQL formatting.  Many businesses perform code review and have code standards, so why not use an efficiency tool on everyone’s computer and make sure the code is written correctly from the first time?  If you’re interested in this tool, there are free editions available.  If you like it, you can buy it.  I bought it because it works.  I love it, and I want to hear all your opinions on it, too. You can get the product for FREE.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• Make Your PC Look Like Windows Phone 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows Phone 7 offers a unique and exciting UI that displays lots of information efficiently on the screen.  And with a simple Rainmeter theme, you can have the same UI and content directly on your Windows 7 desktop. Turn your Desktop into a Windows Phone 7 lookalike To give your Windows 7 desktop a Windows Phone 7 makeover, first you need to have the free Rainmeter application installed.  If you do not have it installed, download it from the link below and run the setup.  Accept the license agreement, and install it with the default settings. By default Rainmeter will automatically run when you start your computer.  If you do not want this, you can uncheck the box during the setup. Now, download the Omnimo UI theme for Rainmeter (link below).  You will need to unzip the folder first. This theme uses the Segoe UI and the Segoe UI Light font, so Windows Vista users need to install the segoeuil.ttf font first, and XP users need to install both the segoeui.ttf and the segoeuil.ttf font first.  Copy the appropriate fonts to C:\Windows\Fonts, or in Vista double-click on the font and select Install. Now, run the Rainmeter theme setup.  Double-click on the Rainstaller.exe in the Omnimo folder. Click Express install to add the theme and skin to Rainmeter. Click Finish, and by default Rainmeter will open with your new theme. When the new theme opens the first time, you will be asked to read the readme, or simply go to the gallery. When you open the gallery, you can choose from a wide variety of tiles and gadgets to place on your desktop.  You can also choose a different color scheme for your tiles. Once you’re done, click the X in the top right hand corner to close the Gallery.  Welcome to your Windows Phone 7 desktop!  Many of the gadgets are dynamic, and you can change the settings for most of them.  The only thing missing is the transition animations that Windows Phone 7 shows when you launch an application. To make it look even more like Windows Phone 7, you can change your background to black.  This makes the desktop theme really dramatic. And, if you want to add gadgets or change the color scheme, simply click on the + logo on the top. Windows Phone 7 Desktop Wallpapers If you’d prefer to simply change your background, My Microsoft Life has several very nice Windows Phone 7 wallpapers available for free.  Click the link below to download these and other Microsoft-centric wallpapers. If you can’t wait to get the new Windows phone 7, this is a great way to start experiencing the beauty of the phone UI on your desktop. Links Download Rainmeter Download the Omnimo UI Rainmeter theme Download Windows Phone 7 inspired wallpapers Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayTest All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PCHow-To Geek on Lifehacker: How to Make Windows Vista Less AnnoyingCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Mute the System Volume in WindowsMake Ubuntu Automatically Save Changes to Your Session TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Norwegian Life If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportation Google Translate (for animals) Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of 100 Tweeters Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer

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• ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series with downloadable sample code - Part 1

  - by Jon Galloway

  There's a lot of great ASP.NET Web API content on the ASP.NET website at http://asp.net/web-api. I mentioned my screencast series in original announcement post, but we've since added the sample code so I thought it was worth pointing the series out specifically. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. So - let's watch them together! Grab some popcorn and pay attention, because these are short. After each video, I'll talk about what I thought was important. I'm embedding the videos using HTML5 (MP4) with Silverlight fallback, but if something goes wrong or your browser / device / whatever doesn't support them, I'll include the link to where the videos are more professionally hosted on the ASP.NET site. Note also if you're following along with the samples that, since Part 1 just looks at the File / New Project step, the screencast part numbers are one ahead of the sample part numbers - so screencast 4 matches with sample code demo 3. Note: I started this as one long post for all 6 parts, but as it grew over 2000 words I figured it'd be better to break it up. Part 1: Your First Web API [Video and code on the ASP.NET site] This screencast starts with an overview of why you'd want to use ASP.NET Web API: Reach more clients (thinking beyond the browser to mobile clients, other applications, etc.) Scale (who doesn't love the cloud?!) Embrace HTTP (a focus on HTTP both on client and server really simplifies and focuses service interactions) Next, I start a new ASP.NET Web API application and show some of the basics of the ApiController. We don't write any new code in this first step, just look at the example controller that's created by File / New Project. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; namespace NewProject_Mvc4BetaWebApi.Controllers { public class ValuesController : ApiController { // GET /api/values public IEnumerable<string> Get() { return new string[] { "value1", "value2" }; } // GET /api/values/5 public string Get(int id) { return "value"; } // POST /api/values public void Post(string value) { } // PUT /api/values/5 public void Put(int id, string value) { } // DELETE /api/values/5 public void Delete(int id) { } } } Finally, we walk through testing the output of this API controller using browser tools. There are several ways you can test API output, including Fiddler (as described by Scott Hanselman in this post) and built-in developer tools available in all modern browsers. For simplicity I used Internet Explorer 9 F12 developer tools, but you're of course welcome to use whatever you'd like. A few important things to note: This class derives from an ApiController base class, not the standard ASP.NET MVC Controller base class. They're similar in places where API's and HTML returning controller uses are similar, and different where API and HTML use differ. A good example of where those things are different is in the routing conventions. In an HTTP controller, there's no need for an "action" to be specified, since the HTTP verbs are the actions. We don't need to do anything to map verbs to actions; when a request comes in to /api/values/5 with the DELETE HTTP verb, it'll automatically be handled by the Delete method in an ApiController. The comments above the API methods show sample URL's and HTTP verbs, so we can test out the first two GET methods by browsing to the site in IE9, hitting F12 to bring up the tools, and entering /api/values in the URL: That sample action returns a list of values. To get just one value back, we'd browse to /values/5: That's it for Part 1. In Part 2 we'll look at getting data (beyond hardcoded strings) and start building out a sample application.

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• Change a File Type’s Icon in Windows 7

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  In Windows XP, you could change the icon associated with a file type in Windows Explorer. In Windows 7, you have to do some registry hacking to change a file type’s icon. We’ll show you a much easier and faster method for Windows 7. File Types Manager File Types Manager is a great little utility from NirSoft that includes the functionality of Windows XP’s folder options and adds a whole lot more. It works great in Windows 7, and its interface makes it easy to change a bunch of related file types at once. A common problem we run into are icons that look too similar. You have to look for a few seconds to see the difference between the movies and the text files. Let’s change the icon for the movie files to make visually scanning through directories much easier. Open up File Types Manager. Find the “Default Icon” column and click on it to sort the list by the Default Icon. (We’ve hidden a bunch of columns we don’t need, so you may find it to be farther to the right.) This groups together all file extensions that already have the same icon. This is convenient because we want to change the icon of all video files, which at the moment all have the same default icon. Click the “Find” button on the toolbar, of press Ctrl+F. Type in a file type that you want to change. Note that all of the extensions with the same default icon are grouped together. Right click on the first extension whose icon you want to change and click on Edit Selected File Type, or select the first extension and press F2. Click the “…” button next to the Default Icon text field. Click on the Browse… button. File Types Manager allows you to select .exe, .dll, or .ico files. In our case, we have a .ico file that we took from the wonderful public domain Tango icon library. Select the appropriate icon (if you’re using a .exe or .dll there could be many possible icons) then click OK. Repeat this process for each extension whose icon you would like to change. Now it’s much easier to see at a glance which files are movies and which are text files! Of course, this process will work for any file type, so customize your files’ icons as you see fit. Download File Types Manager from NirSoft for Windows Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change the Default Editor for Batch Files in VistaCustomizing Your Icons in Windows XPChange Your Windows 7 Library Icons the Easy WayRestore Missing Desktop Icons in Windows 7 or VistaCustomize Your Folder Icons in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Scan your PC for nasties with Panda ActiveScan CleanMem – Memory Cleaner AceStock – The Personal Stock Monitor Add Multiple Tabs to Office Programs The Wearing of the Green – St. Patrick’s Day Theme (Firefox) Perform a Background Check on Yourself

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• Uncovering Compiler Errors in ASP.NET MVC Views

  - by Ben Griswold

  ASPX and ASCX files are compiled on the fly when they are requested on the web server. This means it’s possible that you aren’t catching compile errors associated with your views when you build your ASP.NET MVC project in Visual Studio.  Unless you’re willing to click through your entire application, rendering each view looking for errors, you application is left a little vulnerable to user issues.  Fortunately, there’s a work around.  Open up your MVC project file in notepad or within the Visual Studio IDE by unloading the project and then editing the .csproj file (both actions are available by right-clicking on the Project Node in Solution Explorer.)  Notice the MvcBuildViews option.  It’s probably set to false.  Flip the value to true and you’ll magically start compiling your views when you build your application. <MvcBuildViews>false</MvcBuildViews> Taking this action will slow down your builds a bit, but if you’re a hack like me, it’ll probably save your day in the long run. Now you’re probably thinking, “Neat trick – how’s it work?”  Scroll down toward the bottom of your csproj file and you will notice the AfterBuild target triggers the AspNetCompiler action if the MvcBuildViews option is set to true.  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">   <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp"                   PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" /> </Target> Great. One more thing. Let’s say you don’t want to slow down all of your builds, but you absolutely want to know if there are any compiler issues with your views before you commit your code to version control or deploy or whatever.  Here’s what you can do – change the AfterBuild condition to run if your configuration is set to Release mode.  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='Release'">   <!– Always pre-compile ASPX and ASCX in release mode –>   <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp"                   PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" /> </Target> Now your debug mode builds will continue to be as fast as ever and you can quickly validate your views by building in release mode when you so choose.  There’s one little catch – this setup won’t consider the MvcBuildViews option whatsoever! So if you decide to go with this configuration, you might want to add a comment near the MvcBuildViews option letting other developers know they can change the MvcBuildViews option as much as they’d like but it’s not going to affect the AfterBuild action.  Or don’t include the comment and let your team members figure it out for themselves…

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• Throttling in OSB

  - by Knut Vatsendvik

  Technorati Tags: soa,integration,osb,throttling,overload protection A common problem with integration is the risk of overloading a particular web service. When the capacity of a web service is reached and it continues to accept connections, it will most likely start to deteriorate. Fortunately there are 2 techniques, with Oracle Service Bus, that you can apply for protecting this from happening. You can either limit the concurrent number of requests for a Business Service (outbound requests) or you can limit the number of threads processing the requests for a Proxy Service (inbound requests). Limiting the Concurrent Number of Requests Limiting the concurrent requests for a Business Service cannot be set at design time so you have to use the built-in Oracle Service Bus Administration Console to do it (/sbconsole). Follow these steps to enable it: In Change Center, click Create to start a new Session Select Project Explorer, and navigate to the Business Service you want to limit Select the Operational Settings tab of the View a Business Service page In this tab, under Throttling, select the Enable check box. By enabling throttling you Specify a value for Maximum Concurrency Specify a positive integer value for Throttling Queue to backlog messages that has exceeded the message concurrency limit Specify the maximum time in milliseconds for Message Expiration a message can spend in Throttling Queue Click Update Click Active in Change Center to active the new settings If you re-publish the service, it will not overwrite the settings. Only if the resource is renamed or moved, it will. Please note that a throttling queue is an in-memory queue. Messages that are placed in this queue are not recoverable when a server fails or when you restart a server. Limiting the Number of Threads A better approach, in my opinion, is to limit the number of threads that can work with request. Follow these steps to do it: Open the WebLogic Server Console (/console) In Change Center, click Create to start a new Session In the left pane expand Environment and select Work Managers In the Global Work Managers page, click New    Click the Work Manager radio button, then click Next Enter a Name for the new Work Manager, and click Next In the Available Targets list, select server instances or clusters on which you will deploy applications that reference the Work Manager Click Finish. The new Work Manager now appears in the Global Work Managers page. Select the new Work Manager Right next to the Maximum Threads Constraint drop-down box, click New   Click the Maximum Threads Constraint radio button, then click Next Enter a Name and a thread Count to be the maximum size to allocate for requests. Click Next  In the Available Targets list, select server instances or clusters on which you will deploy applications that reference the Work Manager Click Finish Click Save Click Active in Change Center to active your changes.  A restart may be necessary.   Puh! Almost there. Start a new session. Go to the Service Bus Console (/sbconsole) and find your consuming Proxy Service. Click the Edit button of the Transport Configuration tab. Click Next Set the Dispatch Policy to the new Work Manager Click Last Click Save Click Active in Change Center to active your changes. 

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• Java Script – Content delivery networks (CDN) can bit you in the butt.

  - by Ryan Ternier

  As much as I love the new CDN’s that Google, Microsoft and a few others have publically released, there are some strong gotchas that could come up and bite you in the ass if you’re not careful. But before we jump into that, for those that are not 100% sure what a CDN is (besides Canadian).   Content Delivery Network. A way of distributing your static content across various servers in different physical locations.  Because this static content is stored on many servers around the world, whenever a user needs to access this content, they are given the closest server to their location for this data. Already you can probably see the immediate bonuses to a system like this: Lower bandwidth Even small script files downloaded thousands of times will start to take a noticeable hit on your bandwidth meter. Less connections/hits to your web server which gives better latency If you manage many servers, you don’t need to manually update each server with scripts. A user will download a script for each website they visit. If a user is redirected to many domains/sub-domains within your web site, they might download many copies of the same file. When a system sees multiple requests from the same  domain, they will ignore the download   Those are just a handful of the many bonuses a CDN will give you. And for the average website, a CDN is great choice. Check out the following CDN links for their solutions: Google AJAX Library: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/ Microsoft Ajax library: http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/cdn.ashx The Gotcha There is always a catch. Here are some issues I found with using CDN’s that hopefully can help you make your decision. HTTP / HTTPS If you are running a website behind SSL, make sure that when you reference your CDN data that you use https:// vs. http://. If you forget this users will get a very nice message telling them that their secure connection is trying to access unsecure data. For a developer this is fairly simple, but general users will get a bit anxious when seeing this. Trusted Sites Internet Explorer has this really nifty feature that allows users to specify what sites they trust, and by some defaults IE7 only allows trusted sites to be viewed.  No problem, they set your website as trusted. But what about your CDN? If a user sets your websites to trusted, but not the CDN, they will not download those static files. This has the potential to totally break your web site. Pedantic Network Admins This alone is sometimes the killer of projects. However, always be careful when you are going to use a CDN for a professional project. If a network / security admin sees that you’re referencing an outside source, or that a call from a website might hit an outside domain.. panties will be bunched, emails will be spewed out and well, no one wants that.

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• SQLAuthority News – Windows Efficiency Tricks and Tips – Personal Technology Tip

  - by pinaldave

  This is the second post in my series about my favorite Technology Tips, and I wanted to focus on my favorite Microsoft product.  Choosing just one topic to cover was too hard, though.  There are so many interesting things I have to share that I am forced to turn this second installment into a five-part post.  My five favorite Windows tips and tricks. 1) You can open multiple applications using the task bar. With the new Windows 7 taskbar, you can start navigating with just one click.  For example, you can launch Word by clicking on the icon on your taskbar, and if you are using multiple different programs at the same time, you can simply click on the icon to return to Word.  However, what if you need to open another Word document, or begin a new one?  Clicking on the Word icon is just going to bring you back to your original program.  Just click on the Word icon again while holding down the shift key, and you’ll open up a new document. 2) Navigate the screen with the touch of a button – and not your mouse button. Yes, we live in a pampered age.  We have access to amazing technology, and it just gets better every year.  But have you ever found yourself wishing that right when you were in the middle of something, you didn’t have to interrupt your work flow be reaching for your mouse to navigate through the screen?  Yes, we have all been guilty of this pampered wish.  But Windows has delivered!  Now you can move your application window using your arrow keys. Lock the window to the left, right hand screen: Win+left Arrow and Win+right Arrow Maximize & minimize: Win+up arrow and Win+down arrow Minimize all items on screen: Win+M Return to your original folder, or browse through all open windows: Alt+up arrow, Alt+Left Arrow, or Alt+right arrow Close down or reopen all windows: win+home 3) Are you one of the few people who still uses Command Prompt? You know who you are, and you aren’t ashamed to still use this option that so many people have forgotten about it.  You can easily access it by holding down the shift key while RIGHT clicking on any folder. 4) Quickly select multiple files without using your mouse. We all know how to select multiple files or folders by Ctrl-clicking or Shift-clicking multiple items.  But all of us have tried this, and then accidentally released Ctrl, only to lose all our precious work.  Now there is a way to select only the files you want through a check box system.  First, go to Windows Explorer, click Organize, and then “Folder and Search Options.”  Go to the View tab, and under advanced settings, you can find a box that says “Use check boxes to select items.”  Once this has been selected, you will be able to hover your mouse over any file and a check box will appear.  This makes selecting multiple, random files quick and easy. 5) Make more out of remote access. If you work anywhere in the tech field, you are probably the go-to for computer help with friends and family, and you know the usefulness of remote access (ok, some of us use this extensively at work, as well, but we all have friends and family who rely on our skills!).  Often it is necessary to restart a computer, which is impossible in remote access as the computer will not show the shutdown menu.  To force the computer to do your wishes, we return to Command Prompt.  Open Command Prompt and type “shutdown /s” for shutdown, or “shutdown /r” for restart. I hope you will find above five tricks which I use in my daily use very important. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Personal Technology

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• HTML Presence Controls for Communications Server 14 CodePlex Project

  Showing Presence on the Web If youre running Office Communicator Server 2007 R2, you know that your only out-of-the-box option for showing presence on the web is to use the NameControl ActiveX control that ships as part of Office.  Being an ActiveX control, this obviously means that youre limited to Internet Explorer.  Also, nobody likes ActiveX controls What if you want to show the presence of users in a pure ASP.NET or HTML application and cant assume that the user has Communicator installed you need anASP.NET or HTML presence control.  HTML Presence Controls for Microsoft Communications Server 14 We recently worked with the UC team at Microsoft on a keynote demo for TechEd 2010 in New Orleans.  The demo was for a fictitious airline Fabrikam Airlines that wanted to show the presence of customer service and reservations agents on its website.  Customers could also start an instant message conversation with the agents using a Silverlight web chat window that used WCF to communicate with the backend UCMA application. We built HTML Presence Controls that use AJAX to poll a REST-based WCF service running in IIS and hosting a UCMA 3.0 presence subscription application.   Microsoft has graciously allowed us to publish these on CodePlex so that the development community can benefit from them:  http://htmlpresencecontrols.codeplex.com/ We will be maintaining the CodePlex project as new builds of UCMA 3.0 become available.  Check out the project home page on CodePlex for some more in-depth details on how the controls are implemented. ASP.NET Server Control Implementation Were providing an ASP.NET Server Control implementation that you can use stand-alone or in a GridView or Repeater (or other layout control).  The control has properties that allow you to control its appearance, e.g. you can choose whether or not to show the contacts name or availability text. You can also use the server control in a layout control such as a GridView by putting it in a TemplateColumn and binding to the Sip Uri in the data source. Disclaimer Once we started working on these, we realized why Microsoft hasnt shipped such controls as part of the product.  There are some tradeoffs you have to be aware of when using these controls, heres the high level. Privacy The backend UCMA 3.0 application that subscribes to presence of contacts runs as a trusted application and can thus retrieve the presence of any user in the organization.  Theres currently no good way in UCMA to apply any privacy rules to ensure that the consumer of the presence controls has permission to see the presence of the contacts that the controls are bound to.  Just to be absolutely crystal clear These controls provide a way to query the presence of any user in the organization, regardless of the privacy relationship between the person consuming the controls and the contacts whose presence is being displayed. Were exploring options for a design pattern that would allow you to inject some privacy controls.  Keep in mind though that you would most likely be responsible for implementing this logic, as there is currently no functionality in UCMA that allows you to do that. Polling the WCF REST Service The controls poll the backend WCF service to retrieve the presence of contacts - you can control the refresh interval so that they poll less often. We implemented a caching layer so that the WCF service is always communicating with a presence cache it never communicates directly with Communications Server.  For example, if your web page is showing the presence of sip:[email protected] and 500 people have the page open, the presence cache only contains one instance of the subscription Communications Server is not being polled 500 times for the presence of that contact. Once the presence of a contact changes, it is updated in the cache.  There are some server-based push mechanisms that would work nicely here, such as the one that Outlook Web Access 2010 uses.  Unfortunately we didnt have time to explore these options. Community Contribution Take a look at the project Issue Tracker, there are a couple of things we can use some help with.  Shoot me a note if youre interested in contributing to the project. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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